The Choice No One Else Can Make

Mark 1:40-45

To my knowledge the Bible records only three stories of lepers being cleansed by the power of God. There is the story of Naaman, the Syrian. The story you just read from Mark is paralleled in Matthew and Luke and there is another recording in Luke of Jesus healing 10 lepers and only one coming back to thank and praise Jesus for his work of healing.

The single leper that is cured as recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke is an interesting one because it is the only instance where the leper was actually touched to be healed. Jesus may very well have healed other lepers by touching them, but any of those instances aren’t recorded. Naaman washes in the Jordan River, the 10 lepers are simply asked to show themselves to the priest and are cleansed while walking there. But this leper from today’s lesson comes right up to Jesus breaking all sorts of cultural faux-pa. Lepers were supposed to do as the 10 lepers did in Luke’s Gospel and stand at a distance, call out to anybody nearby as they passed through letting everybody within an earshot know that there were lepers coming through, Unclean! Unclean! Yet this guy, walks right up to the Lord and Savior of the Universe in confidence and perhaps arrogance, and seemingly with a bit of disrespect, saying to Jesus “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

And what does Jesus do? He says, “I am willing, be clean.” While reaching out and TOUCHING THIS GUY!

Jesus risks his health, his ministry, his life by touching this man. Yes he is the Son of God, yes he is curing the leprosy in his touch, but in touching this man, Jesus could have been condemned as unclean himself. He could have been outcast from society forced to shout Unclean whenever he walked anywhere. Imagine that, the only truly clean person in the entirety of the universe shouting unclean as He walked anywhere.

What Jesus does for us is even greater than that risk. He risks Himself on us to the ultimate degree by taking on our sin, even though He never once sinned Himself and He went to the cross to die, to be punished for sins and crimes He did not commit. Jesus allows the Father to pour out His just wrath upon Himself instead of on the entire universe. He says, I did those things, I committed those sins, when He did no such thing. It reminds me of a clip from the most recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

A bit of background for those who haven’t seen the movie…

Harvey Dent is Gotham’s district attorney. He is injured in a trap that the Joker had set. Dent’s injury earned him the villainous name of Two-Face because one side of his face is undamaged and the other is quite gruesome. After losing the only person he cares about, Dent turns from all that he has done to clean up the city and becomes a villain himself, killing people by flipping a coin, heads they live, tails they die. He brings his tyranny to commissioner Gordon and his family, blaming him for having a part in his current condition. Batman stops Dent. And that brings us to this clip, the aftermath.

2:20:25 – 2:24:25

Commissioner Gordon is distraught that Dent turned away from who he was. Everything that Dent had fought for would be undone when people realized he was just as corrupt as the criminals he put away. All of the criminals he had put in jail would go free and all of the progress they’d made would come to nothing. The city would be anarchy once again, the Joker, mastermind behind it all, would win.

Batman steps in and realizes what he must do. He must take the blame for Dent’s crimes, even though he had done nothing wrong, he had to make Dent appear like the one without blemish. He had to risk being made unclean to make the undeserving Harvey Dent perfectly clean.

For Batman, this realization comes to fruition after a previous conversation with his Butler Alfred who when the Joker demanded that Batman turn himself in, says that the point of Batman is that “he can be the outcast, he can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.”

Though Batman didn’t hear it, Alfred also remarks shortly after this, when Batman doesn’t turn himself in that “Even if everyone hates him for it, that’s the sacrifice he’s making, he’s not being a hero, he’s being something more.”

You see, a typical hero would have captured Dent and turned him in and exposed him for what he was, at least according to that limited definition of hero. A hero would be expected to take glory and fame, not take the role of the outcast and the villain even though he is no such thing.

In a similar way, the point of Christ was to take on the sin of the whole world. To take on sin’s punishment of death and to destroy sin and death by rising to life again. He makes the choice that truly no one else can make.

In this, Jesus is not a hero. He’s much more than a hero. A hero turns in the bad guys and helps out the good guys and accepts the praise for his heroic acts. Let’s face it. On earth, there are no actually good guys. As I’ll say once more, from Romans 3 “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” None of us deserve to be saved and protected by God. But we are still justified freely by God’s grace in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Batman and Jesus is that Batman takes the punishment of being hunted, of being hated for the crimes, but he doesn’t truly take the ultimate punishment of life in prison or perhaps the death penalty. Jesus takes our punishment for sin, which is death, which he absolutely did not deserve. And he conquers that punishment in His resurrection from the dead.

Batman takes the part of the punishment for Dent, the hatred, the role of being the outcast because he can endure it.

Christ takes on death not because he can endure it, but rather because he can overcome it. He could be killed and death had no power over him because he didn’t do anything wrong, because he is one with the Father.

In my opinion, the best symbolism in the clip you just watched is when Batman takes Harvey Dent’s face and turns it from the mangled, disgusting, corrupted side to the unblemished, beautiful, perfect side. This is what Christ does for us. We are all two-faces. We are all filled with sin and it corrupts our image, but in Christ, God turns that side of us away and gives us another side, the side that we were created to be, the Saint side, the face of Christ himself and because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Our Heavenly Father does not look at the sinful side, He looks at the forgiven side given to us by Christ through the cross and empty tomb, Amen.

Performance Review

Mark 1:4-11

From the reading in the link above, we will be focusing particularly on these words. “And a voice came from heaven “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

These words from God the Father to God the Son, Jesus Christ show the Father’s approval of and delight in His Son’s life.

Whether we admit it or not, we all seek the approval of somebody in our lives. Whether we’re seeking the approval of our parents, kids, professors, peers, siblings, spouses, friends, enemies, bosses, co-workers, employees, and yes we also tend to seek approval from God.

I think ultimately, all of us would rather have approval and compliments than disapproval and insults.

So what would people say about you? If you had to have a performance review of your life, what would they say? Joe has led a pretty ok life? Sally has been atrocious? Matt is perfect? Maybe you don’t know what to expect.

Have you ever had a performance review? I’ve had a couple, they can be nerve-wracking, but for those of you who’ve never had one, I have a clip to show you from the best place to find a performance review, The Office,

Performance Review – 1:45-4:51

Now obviously this wouldn’t probably happen in an actual performance review. I hope and pray that people as ridiculous as Michael Scott aren’t managing any companies, but we see in Pam that she doesn’t know what to expect. The reviews from Michael can be erratic, unfocused, unpredictable simply because that’s who Michael is. It has very little to do with who Pam is.

I think that if I were being reviewed by one of my friends, peers or whoever that if they were truly honest, my performance review would be the same way, random, up and down, not very steady. And that would be because of who I am, not because of who they are.

How would yours be?

Raising the stakes a bit. If a voice were to come out of heaven and speak to the whole world about you, what would it say?

On one hand, it would probably say something very similar for all people, perhaps it would begin with, to paraphrase Romans 3:23 “For You have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Indeed that’s what it should say for me.

That’s the reality of life, we are all sinners and don’t deserve praise from our friends, bosses or God, but that Romans passage doesn’t stop there. It keeps going.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, AND all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Because of Jesus death and resurrection, we no longer need to fear the punishment for our sin. We no longer need to fear being unaccepted by God. God has accepted us because of what Jesus Christ did for us in dying and rising for the forgiveness of our sins.

So that voice that comes from heaven wouldn’t be a voice of disappointment. It would be a voice of approval. This is my beloved Son or Daughter, whom I love, who has been washed clean by the blood of the lamb.

And all this not because of who you are, but because of who God is. Not because of what you have done, but because of what God has done for you. Amen.

All Saints Day vs. All Sinners Day

Disclaimer: At Concordia University Saint Paul, in celebration of All Saints Day, we decorate the chapel with thousands of stars, many with names of those who have died in the faith from our community and throughout history. When I reference stars, that is what I'm referring to.

It is a very comforting thing, to think that every single person, whose name is written on one of these stars around us was a believer in Jesus Christ, that they lived their lives of faith and were granted eternal life. As Revelation 2:10 says:

“Be Faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

It however may not a very comforting thing to know that all of these people who have their names written on a star were sinners. As Romans 3:23 says

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We don’t like to think about that do we? How those who have passed on were sinners. We focus so much more on how great they were, how much we’ll miss them and rightly so I believe. Because we know that they were unconditionally loved by God, even if we were not able to love them unconditionally while they were here on earth. As Romans 8:38-39 says.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

While we hear that passage in life, it is a great comfort to us, but it is also a great comfort as we think about those who have died in the faith, knowing that death cannot separate our loved ones from God’s love. Death is a hindrance to our loving and being loved by those who have passed on, but it is not a hindrance for our Heavenly Father, who conquered death by sending His Son Jesus to die for the sins of the whole world and then raised him to life again.

All of us undoubtedly have friends or family who have been called from this earth to their heavenly home with God. While we miss them, we take comfort in the fact that they are in Good Hands.

But what about us? We are saints too are we not? If we died today we’d be assured of our resurrection from the dead to eternal life with our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, right? But yet we still sin. We still suffer. We still struggle. We still cry. We still hurt. How can we be forgiven and still hurt?

As Romans 7:15-20 says

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me."

That passage reminds me of this clip from The Fellowship of the Ring...

Watch Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition disc 2) from 21:14-23:47.

Gandalf’s words about Gollum are very relatable to us here on earth. “He hates and loves the Ring, much as he hates and loves himself.” Gollum has forgotten who he is. He is not Gollum, he is Smeagol, a gentle creature who loved to fish and relax on the water. But the ring poisoned his mind and turned him into something else, it turned him into Gollum. And throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy he struggles to understand who he is, what he is.

It is just as we struggle with who we are. Am I (insert your name here) the Sinner or am I (insert your name here) the Saint? We hate the sinner inside of us and love the saint inside of us. We wish we could be only saint, but we can’t. As Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 26:41 as they struggle to stay awake in Gethsemane.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

We desire nothing more than to be rid of our flesh and its weakness. And we struggle with the fact that this will not occur on this side of heaven.

As the scene from the clip you’ve just seen continues, Gandalf lectures Frodo on his immediate judgment of Gollum. As he says, “Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them Frodo?”

In our world, that line would be tweaked to say “All that live deserve death, and the ONE deserved life, died.” That One is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who took what we deserved and gave us what only He deserved: eternal life with our Heavenly Father in Paradise.

May we find peace in that our God loved us with that deep of a love, to make us His children. As 1 John 3:1-3 says:

"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."

Amen.